Turkey is heading towards a second round of voting as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has failed to secure absolute majority while his key challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu was also not able to secure an outright majority. With no candidate having crossed the 50 percent threshold for the presidency, Turkey is set for a runoff for the first time ever. The second-round voting shall take place on May 28, 2023.
Ahmed Yener, the head of the Supreme Electoral Board told reporters that during this election, voter turnout was high at over 88 percent.
In a rousing speech outside his AK Party’s headquarters in Ankara, Erdogan claimed his ruling alliance had won a “majority” as votes were still being counted.
“But if people take us to a second round, we will respect that too”, Erdogan told his supporters.
Erdogan appeared confident that he would secure another term in office.
“I wholeheartedly believe that we will continue to serve our people in the coming five years”, the 69-year-old leader said to huge cheers outside his party’s headquarters in Ankara.
Erdogan is Turkey’s longest leader and served as prime minister from 2003 until 2014, after which he stepped down as party leader to be the president. Overall, he has been in power for 20 years.
He commands fierce loyalty from pious Turks who once felt disenfranchised in secular Turkey and his political career has survived an attempted coup in 2016, as well as numerous corruption scandals.
However, his political standing was severely damaged by rising inflation and the devastating earthquake in February this year.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu promised that if he wins, he will return to orthodox economic policies from Erdogan’s heavy management. He also says he would seek to return Turkey to the parliamentary system of governance, from Erdogan’s executive presidential system passed in a referendum in 2017.
Kilicdaroglu has also promised to restore the independence of a judiciary that critics say Erdogan has used to crack down on dissent.
He expressed confidence that he would win in a runoff as he spoke alongside leaders of the six-party alliance he led into the election.
“If our nation says second round, we will absolutely win in the second round”, he said. “The will for change in the society is higher than 50 percent”.
The 74-year-old has been chairman of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) since 2007.
In addition to the presidential vote, parliamentary elections were also held in Turkey on May 14, 2023. Erdogan claimed his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) had won a parliamentary majority with the help of its ultra-nationalist partner, the MHP.
Meanwhile, commenting on Turkey’s election, exiled journalist Abdullah Bozkurt said:
No matter the results of Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections, nefarious, anti-democratic and unaccountable factions entrenched in Turkish institutions and society with considerable political influence will not fade away, providing little hope for a better prospect for Turkey and a solid, stable and sustainable path for building a real democracy.
Unless Turks really address this fundamental problem in their midst, we will continue to see something of a game of musical chairs in Turkish politics. A vicious cycle between reforms and rollbacks of democratization will be inevitable unless these dark forces lurking in the shadows and sometimes rearing their ugly heads are restrained and put under control.
One thing is certain, though. Whether Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Public Alliance (Cumhur İttifakı) of far-right, Islamist and neo-nationalists win, or the opposition Nation Alliance (Millet İttifakı) led by Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu wins, both have no choice but to make adjustments in domestic and foreign policies in order to sustain their governments. Both would be desperate to mend fences with the West, from which Turkey obtains the bulk of its investment and does most of its foreign trade. The pressure on Turkish society, which has become extreme, needs to be relieved, and any future government will have to proceed in a manner that neither causes a rupture in the society nor sparks irreconcilable conflict.
However, most of the decisions the next government will take out of necessity would be predicated on tactical moves rather than a strategic realignment and a firm commitment to the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights. If Erdogan wins, he would brand his U-turns as normalization. If Kılıçdaroğlu wins, he would try to sell his government policies as a restoration of democracy and a return to the rule of the law. But given the fact that both are authoritarian leaders in their own political parties with little or no intra-party democracy, neither is really interested in seeing a full-fledged democracy with checks and balances, independent institutions and an impartial media. In any case, the nefarious factions nested in the country’s institutions will continue to exert influence, undermining any progress and dealing blows to policy adjustments.
Erdogan’s first decade of economic revival and warming relations with Europe was followed by a second one filled with social and political turmoil.
He responded to a failed 2016 coup attempt with sweeping purges that sent chills through Turkish society and made him an increasingly uncomfortable partner for the West.
The emergence of Kilicdaroglu and his six-party opposition alliance – the type of broad-based coalition Erdogan excelled at forging throughout his career – gives foreign allies and Turkish voters a clear alternative.
A runoff in two weeks could give Erdogan time to regroup and reframe the debate.
But he would still be hounded by Turkey’s most dire economic crisis since the 1990s.
Many are still also haunted by the trauma of the government’s stuttering response to a February earthquake that claimed more than 50,000 lives.
“We all missed democracy”, Kilicdaroglu said after voting in the capital Ankara.
